by Anne Rice
"Lestat de Lioncourt has arrived! There are now innumerable elders amongst us. But again, I caution you, Children of the Night, lay low where you are. Do not seek to come here. Let the elders meet. Give the elders a chance to stop the destruction. And search, search for this evil outlaw among us who has kidnapped one of our own from us. Search but take care. An ancient one can conceal his thoughts, but he cannot conceal the powerful beating of his heart, nor can he entirely conceal a low humming sound emanating from his very person.
"Call us with all reports. And please, I beg the rest of you, stay off the phone lines until the kidnap victim is found or until you have further reports from me."
Benedict shut down the volume. He got up from the low-slung synthetic couch that smelled vaguely of petrol chemicals.
"But that's just it," said Benedict. "There are no young blood drinkers around here, none, they were all driven out of the New York hunting ground a long time ago. We've scanned this entire area. There's nobody out here but us, and even if they do find us, what does it matter, as long as I'm standing right beside him when you make your case to Fareed?"
It struck Rhoshamandes again as it had in the jungles of the Amazon that Benedict had been displaying an amazing gift for battle and intrigue ever since this nasty business had started in earnest.
Who would have expected the mild-mannered and genuinely loving Benedict to drive his machete into Maharet's skull at the moment when Rhosh was frozen with panic?
Who would have expected him to so handily carry the violent but helpless young Viktor to the bedroom upstairs and lock him securely in the large windowless bathroom, remarking so coolly, "Best place for a mortal, obviously, with all that plumbing."
Who would have expected Benedict to have been so handy with hardware-store chains and padlocks to secure that bathroom prison with such simple and clever gestures, piling a store of wood and nails and a hammer nearby if further security measures were needed?
And who but Benedict would have outfitted the bathroom before-hand with every conceivable amenity--scented candles, toilet articles, even popular magazines, a "microwave oven" for the cooking of the stacks of canned foods he'd bought, and heaps of plastic forks and knives and spoons as well as paper bowls and dishes. He'd even included a little refrigerator in the bath full of carbonated sodas and a bottle of the finest Russian vodka, and had thrown in several soft new blankets for the boy and a pillow so he could sleep "comfortably" on the tiled floor when exhaustion eventually got the best of him.
"We don't want him to panic," Benedict had said. "We want him to remain calm and cooperative so this thing can be finished."
By day the boards and nails would make his escape impossible, and for now, when he became panicky, he could press the intercom to speak to his captors.
That he had not done yet. Perhaps he was simply too angry to utter coherent words. That would not have been surprising.
One thing was certain. Someone very powerful had taught this human how to completely lock off his mind from all telepathic intrusion. He was as skilled at that as any scholarly member of the Talamasca. And as far as Rhosh knew, no mortal or immortal could open a telepathic line to others without opening himself to intrusion. So that meant the boy wasn't frantically attempting to send messages to others. And maybe he didn't know how. The vampires who brought him up might have taught him many things, but not how to be a human psychic.
Rhoshamandes didn't much believe in human telepathy anyway. But he had to stop thinking about this! He had to stop thinking about all the different ways this spectacular gambit might fail, and it strongly occurred to him that he ought to call Trinity Gate now and return the boy and throw himself on the mercy of the gathering blood drinkers!
"Are you insane," said the Voice to him. "Are you simply out of your mind? You do that and they'll destroy you. What in the world would prompt them to have the slightest mercy? Since when do blood drinkers have honor?"
"Well, they had better have some or this plan simply isn't going to work," said Rhosh.
Benedict knew Rhosh was talking aloud to the Voice. But he remained attentive, desperate to know what was happening.
"I'll tell you this much on my honor," said Rhosh aloud for the benefit of Benedict as well as the Voice. "The very first thing I will do when I have the power is destroy that little Bedouin! I'm going to take that noisy, impudent little monster in my hands and squeeze the life and the blood and brains out of him. I'm going to drain him dry, and tear his remains into shreds. And I'll do that in the presence of his blessed Sybelle and his blessed Armand and his blessed maker, Marius."
"And just how," asked Benedict gently, "are you going to seize and maintain power?"
"It's pointless bothering with that question," said the Voice. "I've explained myself to your starry-eyed acolyte over and over. When you have me inside you, no one can harm you! You will be as untouchable as Mekare is now."
Mekare.
Without Benedict, would Rhosh have ever dared to attempt moving her? Again Benedict had taken the lead.
The night after the killing of Maharet, as Rhosh called his mortal agents to arrange for a domicile in North America, Benedict had gone off into the jungle to find Mekare a tender young female victim from one of the naked tribes. Benedict had put this frightened and utterly malleable woman into Mekare's arms, the whole while whispering softly to Mekare that she should drink, that she needed the strength, that they had a journey to take, and he'd sat there patiently waiting till the silent monster had slowly wakened to the smell of the blood, slowly lifted her left hand as though it were an unbearable weight and laid it on the breast of the prone victim.
With lightning speed, she'd closed her teeth on the sweet little girl's neck, drinking slowly until the heart was stopped, and could pump no more blood into her. Even after that she drank, her powerful heart drawing the blood until the victim was pale and shriveling. Then she'd sat back, eyes empty as always, her pink tongue licking her pretty lips slowly and efficiently. There wasn't the tiniest spark of reason in her.
And it was Benedict who suggested that they wrap her, that they find the finest coverings or garments that they could and that they wrap her as if she were a mummy in those garments and then they might carry her north safely to accomplish their purpose. "Remember, Marius wrapped the King and Queen," he'd said, "before he moved them from Egypt." Yes, well, if Marius had been telling the truth in that old story.
It had worked. Her fine green robe of interwoven silk and cotton with its trimming of gold and jewels had been spotless, no need to change it. Only wrap her gently in fresh-washed sheets and blankets, slowly, slowly, binding her gently, whispering to her the whole while. It seemed she'd welcomed the soft silk scarf blindfold. Or she hadn't cared. She hadn't cared anymore about anything. She was way past caring. Way past sensing that anything around her was amiss. Oh, that we become such monsters, it was unthinkable. It made Rhosh shudder.
Only once had there been a bad moment, an alarming moment. Benedict after binding her head securely in silk had backed off suddenly, almost stumbling in his haste to get away from her. He stood staring at her.
"What is it!" Rhosh had demanded. The panic was contagious. "Tell me."
"I saw something," Benedict whispered. "I saw something I think that she is seeing."
"You're imagining it," said Rhosh. "She sees nothing. Go on, finish."
What had that been, that thing that Benedict had seen?
Rhosh didn't want to know, didn't dare to want to know. But he couldn't stop wondering.
When they'd had her securely bound like a dead one in a shroud, it had been possible then to leave that horrid place, that awful place that had been Maharet's hearth and sanctum. Rhosh had had enough of looking through the storerooms, of looking at books and parchments and ancient keepsakes, enough, the desks, the computers, all of it. It was tainted with death. He would have taken the jewels perhaps and the gold, but he didn't need these things, and he couldn't bear to touch them.
It was sacrilege somehow, stealing the personal treasures of the dead. He'd been unable to reason himself out of it.
When they were at the edge of the garden enclosure, he'd turned back, pulled the pin from the grenade he'd brought with him, and hurled it into the lighted doorway. The explosion was immediate. The flames raged through the buildings.
Then they had brought the silent burden to these shores, to a planned location obtained through the mortal attorneys with the least amount of delay, and put her to rest in a cool darkened cellar with its small windows soon boarded up by the ever-resourceful Benedict. Only the heartbeat of that bundled body gave evidence of life.
Benedict stood beside him at the railing of the deck. The wind off the Atlantic was deliciously cold, not as fierce as the winds of the northern seas, but bracing, clean and good.
"Well, I understand, you'll be untouchable, but how can you maintain power over them, enough, say, to kill Benji Mahmoud before their very eyes?"
"What are they going to do about it?" asked Rhosh. "And suppose I threaten them that I'll lie in the sun at dawn, as does happen to be my custom, by the way, and can be no more--unless I and they want the younger ones to be devoured by fire when my body, the Source Body, suffers that insult?"
"Would I die," asked Benedict, "if you did that? I mean once you have the Sacred Core?"
"Yes, but I'd never do it!" Rhosh whispered. "Don't you see?"
"Then what good is the threat? If they know you love me--?"
"But they don't know," said the Voice. "That's the thing. They don't know. They know almost nothing about you!" The Voice was fuming again. "And you can strengthen your friend with your blood, strengthen him to where he suffers from such a burning but not fatally! Why have you not given him more of your blood over the centuries? And then of course your blood will be the Source Blood and the strongest that there is, and you will feel the engines of power grinding in you with a new efficiency and fury--."
"Leave this in my hands," said Rhosh to Benedict. "And no, you might not at all die, were I to make good on my threat. Burn yes, but die no. And I will give you my blood." He felt like a fool suddenly obeying the Voice's orders.
"But you could never make another blood drinker," said Benedict, "because if you did you wouldn't be able to make the threat ..."
"Stop talking," said Rhosh. "I have no choice now, do I, but to follow this through! I must get Fareed to put the Sacred Core into me. Never mind all the rest. Just remember the instructions I've given you. Be ready at any moment for my phone call."
"I am," said Benedict.
"And don't, whatever you do, don't call me. Keep the phone ready. And when I call and instruct you to begin torturing the boy--that is, if I have to do that--then you must do it and they must be able to hear his screams through the phone."
"Very well!" said Benedict disgustedly. "But you do realize I've never tortured a human being before."
"Oh, come on, it won't be that difficult! Look at what you've done already. You've taken to this, you know you have. You'll figure a way to make him scream. Look, it's simple. Break his fingers, one by one. There are ten of them."
Benedict sighed.
"They will not harm me as long as the boy is in our hands, don't you see? And when I return here with Fareed, we'll deal with the goddess in the cellar, you understand?"
"All right," said Benedict with the same tone of bitter resignation.
"And then I will be the One! And you will be my beloved, as you have always been."
"Very well."
Truly, with his whole soul, he wished he had not killed Maharet and Khayman. With his whole heart he wished there were some escape now from this. Blood guilt. That had been the name for what he was feeling now. Thousands of years ago as a boy on Crete he'd known what blood guilt was when you killed those who were your own, and Maharet and Khayman had not been enemies.
"Oh, junk poetry, junk philosophy," sang the Voice. "She was going to plunge with her sister into the volcano. I told you. You did what you had to do, as moderns so simply put it. Forget the ways of ancient cultures. You are a blood drinker of immense physical and spiritual power. I will tell you what is sin and what is guilt. Now go to them and make your demand and leave your acolyte here to slice off the head of that boy upstairs if they do not give in to you."
"When they find out--."
"They know," said the Voice. "Turn up your computer volume, Benjamin Mahmoud is telling them everything."
And it was true.
He sat down on the couch beside the laptop with its glowing screen. The website of Benji Mahmoud now showed of all things Benji's very own likeness, not in a still photograph but in a video. There he was with his black fedora and his sharp penetrating black eyes, his round face fiercely animated with the tale he told:
"Lestat is with us. Lestat has been to the jungles of the Amazon seeking the Divine Twins, the keepers of the Sacred Core, and Lestat has come back to tell the tale: the great Maharet has been murdered. Her companion Khayman has been murdered. Their remains were left in a shameful shallow grave, their house desecrated. And the silent one, the passive one, the brave and enduring one, Mekare, is missing. Who has done these things we know not, but we do know this. We stand united against this wicked one."
Rhosh sighed and sat back on the white couch.
"What are you waiting for?" asked Benedict.
Their house desecrated!
"Let them come together," said the Voice. "Let them weigh their losses. Let them weigh what they stand to lose. Let them learn obedience. The hour of midnight has not yet struck. And by that time they will have come to realize their helplessness."
Rhosh didn't bother to answer.
Benedict started to question him again.
"Go see to the prisoners," he said to Benedict and went back out to look over the sea and seriously consider drowning himself, though he knew it wasn't possible and he had no choice now but to play this game to the finish.
22
Gregory
Trinity Gate
Inheriting the Wind
GREGORY HAD to admire this enigmatic Lestat. Never mind that Gregory was in love with him. Who could not admire a creature with such perfect poise, such perfect pitch for what to say to each and every blood drinker who approached him, a creature who could lapse into the greatest tenderness with his mortal ward, Rose, in his arms, and then turn with such fury on Seth, the powerful Seth, demanding to know how and why he'd exposed "these mortal children" to such disasters?
And then how easily he'd wept when greeting Louis and Armand and his lost fledgling, Antoine, whom he'd long ago consigned to history, alive here and thriving with Benji and Sybelle. How considerately he'd held Antoine's hand as the other stammered and trembled and tried to express his love, and how patiently he'd kissed Antoine and assured him that they would have many nights together, all of them, and they would come to know each other and love each other as never before.
"We must all come to the table and talk of what's happening," Lestat had said, so easily assuming command. "Armand, I say let's do this in the attic ballroom. I'll be there as soon as I've taken Rose safely down to the cellar and talked with her. And Benji, you must be there. You must shut down broadcasting long enough to be there, do you understand? No one can absent himself or herself. The crisis is too great. Maharet, Khayman, murdered, their house burned, Mekare gone. The Voice is inheriting the wind, and we have to hold this tent together against it!"
Gregory was tempted to applaud. It was fireworks in the front hallway.
Armand had agreed at once as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do what Lestat wanted.
But wasn't it what they all wanted?
And what a dashing and beautiful figure Lestat was. The James Bond of the Vampires indeed. How had he managed under such pressure to show up at Trinity Gate in a fresh and show-stopping ensemble of Ralph Lauren wool plaids and pastel linen and silk, with brown-and-white wing-tip shoes, and his full sh
ining mane of blond hair--just possibly the most fabled head of hair in the vampire world--tied at the back of his neck in black silk beneath a diamond brooch that might have ransomed a king but likely not his son, Viktor?
The plaid coat was a long hacking jacket, exquisitely like a frock coat of an earlier time when fashion had been more daring and consciously romantic, and it fairly well concealed some sort of weapon, a large weapon that he carried--scent of wood and steel--without losing its beautiful shape and cut.
Oh, this was the blood drinker of now, the vampire of now, for certain. Who else could better grasp that now was the Golden Time for all the Undead, transcending all ages past, and who else better to take the helm at this perfect moment? So what if it had taken this crisis to bring him to himself?
Beside Gregory, Zenobia, Avicus, and Flavius evinced the same complete admiration and fascination, Flavius laughing softly under his breath.
"He is all that anyone ever said he was," he whispered to Gregory.
And Gregory felt that giddy ridiculous feeling so many mortals have described over the millennia--of utter devotion to another so well expressed in the old phrase "I'll follow him anywhere!"
And Gregory did feel that. Yes, I would follow him in whatever he decides to do and put all my strength, all my gifts, at his disposal. But didn't all the others feel precisely the same thing? Hadn't all the arguments and uneasy conversations stopped? The whole house had assembled in the drawing room, the hallway, on the stairs. Weren't all united? Didn't even Gregory's beloved Sevraine and the inscrutable and ever-diffident Notker the Wise stare at Lestat with the same complete submission? Even Lestat's mother, slouching against the front door in her dusty khaki, was eyeing her son with a certain iron satisfaction, as if to say, Well now, maybe something will indeed happen.
Rose, poor Rose, poor mortal Rose, poor tender terrified Rose with her huge searching blue eyes and her thick blue-black curling hair. The sooner she was brought over the better. A mortal mind could be damaged beyond repair by what this girl had witnessed.